One of my fraternity boys has a radio show on the college station, and it is basically a two hour sports talk show about local (Bethany College) sports. Because he’s one of my boys, I told him I would listen and take notes on what he could improve upon. Quite honestly, he was actually pretty good and I could see a potential future in the field.

At any rate, he came down after his show, and I gave him the notes I took and some pasta I made for the boys, and we both were playing with Steve using the new laser toy. We had him all amped up and charging towards the cat tree, when out of nowhere, Lily jumped off the couch and headbutted Steve in the gut as he was mid stride. Steve tumbled a couple feet and totally looked like Willis McGahee after Ryan Clark leveled him, and Lily just climbed back up onto her pillow on the couch.

She didn’t bite or act aggressive (other than flattening Steve), so I guess she was just tired of her comfy couch sounding like a drag race with some crazy cat flying around.

I was going to let that comment fester for a while like the desperate turd that it was. I was just amused to see Timmy do the exact same thing he screeches about when someone else (like Cassidy) does it to him.

I actually don’t need him to be banned on my behalf. Just knowing that, once again, he did the exact same thing to me that he complains about other people doing to him is reward enough for me. Frankly, I don’t even care enough about him to follow the links to his website when he posts them.

So the pattern as predicted comes to pass. A troll post about war/not war, bringing out the crazies, then a TV post (although not a YouTube link, too bad) then a pet post, like “hey, everything’s cool, right?”

So on the recommendation on a thread, I bought one of those Furrminator brushes and I’m wondering how much cat I’m going to have left. I didn’t realize he had so much hair. Also a jar of mustard came out with one of the clumps. I have no idea where it came from.

We’ve definitely reached Too Darn Hot Season here in Southern California (soon with brush fires to match!) so my step count for the day on my pedometer was seriously pathetic. My goal is 10K steps and I didn’t even break 4K.

I was here for Northridge and I’m still here. Though, ironically, I think it was less traumatic than Loma Prieta because Northridge happened in the very early morning on a holiday and Loma Prieta happened in the middle of the afternoon during rush hour.

Has taken out an incredible swath of wilderness and still isn’t yet done after nearly a quarter-million acres. (Was backpacking in the area for a week and missed the fire by three days.) Lawdy, I hope we’re allowed to have winter this year, we’ve seen what a 17% snowpack gets us.

I’m in a very built-up area, so ironically it’s not nearly as much of a threat as it is to someone who lives in a more expensive (ie remote) area. Still, it would suck to have another Station Fire close by.

[sigh] You’re right, of course. Fuel+Santa Anas=the usual thang. What’s perverse is they can and often do happen in the dead of winter. At least we get November-April off, even in dry years. (I’ll leave the Bay Area hills out of that equation.)

Yeah, for Northridge we had serious destruction — including the collapse of the major east-west artery through LA — but relatively little loss of life since it was so early in the morning and a holiday, so the usual 4 am traffic wasn’t on the road.

The worst things that happened were the apartment building collapses, which may be interesting to the architecturally-minded. Some buildings collapsed into the first-floor garages and others didn’t, and it was all to do with the geometry of the bracing, if I understood the TV news right.

Down in central OC, Northridge was pretty-much just a news story. My most vivid quake memory is from Whittier Narrows. I was sitting in my car at a traffic light in Irvine, and when the main shock hit my car hopped straight up in the air about six inches.

My first year in law school, I was in class in the basement of the building when we had a really minor shake. The Valley kids who lived through Sylmar were out the door so fast they created sonic booms.

@burnspbesq: I lived in Uptown Whittier at the time of the Whittier Narrows quake, in a four-plex built in the early 1920’s. The quake knocked that building right off its foundation and snapped off both brick chimneys. They chimney on the street side (corner lot) landed on the gas main at the curb, sending a high pressure plume of natural gas skyward. The guy across the street had the proper tool to close the valves, or the fire could have been catastrophic. Hell, the aftershock a few nights later seemed just as strong as the original quake. I still live not far from there, and sometimes I just stop and think think that it could happen again in the…next…few…seconds…..

I was playing fetch with a kitten once when my retrieving-mad GSP caught wind of the activity. She stomped over to kitty, snatched the cat toy and swallowed it. That also effectively ended unauthorized cat activity.

Suzanne–Liquefaction is pretty darn fascinating. I’m also a big fan of debris flow, soil creep and land slides. Love doing seismic, and occasionally finding karst down by Don Pedro. I don’t get to do much rock coring, maybe more after I finally get my PG?

Personally, the soils that liquefy when someone shouts “BOO” seem like a good place for a garden. Then again, did you know the least seismically active area in the state is down in Galt? Just be sure to live on a hill.

The potential impacts, based on a hypothetical magnitude-9.1 jolt off the Alaskan peninsula, were detailed by a team led by the U.S. Geological Survey to help emergency responders prepare.

Tsunamis are a rare but real threat in California. After the 2011 Japan disaster, tsunami waves raced across the Pacific and damaged boats and docks in the commercial fishing village of Crescent City.

Scientists said a closer offshore quake would create more havoc. The twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach could be shuttered for at least two days because of strong currents, potentially losing $1.2 billion in business. The Oakland Airport would be flooded. Coastal communities would face mass evacuations, the report said.

Coastal planners held meetings this week around the state to digest the information and review their evacuation plans.

Under the scenario, it would take about four hours for tsunami waves to crash into communities near the Oregon state line and about six hours to reach San Diego — theoretically, allowing time for people to flee to higher ground. The force of the waves would sink boats docked in marinas and damage harbors.

Northridge: I was recently out of law school (USC ’92 — Go Trojans) having moved to LA from NY and living in Hemosa Beach. What I remember is the noise; the earth roared and groaned. (Also I may have been screaming, to be completely honest.). I watched TV coverage for hours from the very beginning, including a totally tragicomic scene where a helicopter filmed a car driving over a bridge only to fall (to the drivers death) when the far side of the bridge was out.

Wellington New Zealand here, and since we’re sitting on 2 fault lines so we’re also a when not if….which makes it extra specially annoying that we’ve been hit by 3 6+ earthquakes in the last 2 months, all of them coming from a tiny fault that nobody even knew existed.

Also I am extra grumpy because I got woken up last night by a 5.1

My work sits out on the harbour on reclaimed land so the gib board in the bathrooms is covered in sizeable cracks and they’ve just distributed tsunami walking plans. At this point I’m flinching every time a truck goes past….

Was in Palm Springs on a business trip back in 1999 and woke up in the middle of the night……felt the floor moving and saw the pictures rattling on the walls and thought, hey, this is California, must be a earthquake. Called the hotel desk clerk and he said “Yes ma’am, pretty powerful one too.”

However, I didn’t actually freak out until the next day when I went back to Joshua Tree, climbed to the top of a pile of rocks and remembered something called “aftershocks”…..

@trollhattan: Central city Christchurch was still mostly closed off when we were down there just before Christmas.

A lot of it looks fine and it’s definitely a living city but there are a lot of houses on areas which have been red-zoned which now look like the set of a zombie movie and they will periodically be set on fire.

A lot of people are still suffering PTSD (and have become uncannily good at guessing the magnitude of any quakes) .

Christchurch got hit with a 7.5 which did a lot of damage and brought down store fronts but no-one was killed(partly because it happened early on a Sunday morning)…then about 5 months later an incredibly powerful 6.2(?) happened around lunch time during the work week and everything went to hell.

The gruesome photo with this BBC story was posted by Wayne Rooney himself on Facebook. He was injured during training, by a Manchester United teammate’s boot. I remember another photo I once saw, also of a United player but from the 1960s: the young George Best after a match, with blood running down his shins from the stud marks left by opponents’ boots when they tackled him. (Shin pads were only made mandatory in the 1990s.)

John, Lily was jealous of all the attention Steve was getting. She’s like a three year old kid, and she’s used to the attention that he was getting. So what would a three year old do? Take out the competition.